The Mighty Blowhole - Here the Sun + Moon Do Battle (2012)

After dragging ass for over 6 years (...16 if you count when some of these tunes were originally birthed), the debut Mighty Blowhole album is available for your free downloading pleasure. 

Bass-centric, analog delay-sodden, trip-hoppity, instrumental post-rock...

 

Track listing:

1. Space Fury
2. As the Rapt Seraph That Adores and Burns
3. At the Bazaar
4. In the Cave of Sex
5. The Masked Dyer
6. Dripping, Pouring... Drowning (A Sketch)
7. Chase, No Straighter
8. Office Party
9. As She Came
10. The Night Naphthaline Magda Rose from Her Grave
11. You Are All Tigers
12. O Kali, Glorious and Terrible (A Portrait)
13. These Hermetic Fields
14. As the Reprised Seraph...

Guest musicians featured are John Brocato (8, 10), Andrew Hamiter (9, 11) + Victor Wilson (3), all of whom provided some truly excellent guitarwork that I'd've never come up with... And oldest + dearest pal Dave Sims was cool enough to let me use his mixing suite + his ears... thanks all around, fellers!

DOWNLOAD IT HERE!

Best Music of 2011 ...so far...

(There's a few links below to click on, if you wanna find out more or hear some stuff...)

Administration Shock Him - 39:03 (blissed out post-rock)
The Atomic Bitchwax - The Local Fuzz (one excellent long-ass stoner-rock riff-a-thon)
Cave - Neverendless (weird + krautrocky)
Charts and Maps - Dead Horse (crazy time-signatures + saxophone-infused math-y post-rock)
Clouds as Oceans - Tides (some dreamy instrumental post-metal with lots of shoegazer-y washes of sound)
Danava - Hemisphere of Shadows (sooooo full of crazy-insane riffs... 70's-worshippin' stoner metal at its finest)

Earth - Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light (intense + introspective spaghetti-western metal)
Empire Express - Valleyland (excellent filmic post-rock)
Eternal Tapestry - Beyond the 4th Door (kooky space rock - like Hawkwind trying to play Meddle-era Floyd)
Felipe Arcazas - Induction to the Subconscious (desert rock very reminiscent of some of Brant Bjork's solo stuff... tasty guitarij)
Fire Spoken by the Buffalo - Hiatus (intense guitar-heavy post-rock)
Garage a Trois - Always Be Happy, But Stay Evil (freaky-ass post-rock meets jazz... with vibraphones! And the same drummer as Critters Buggin, if you're old like me...)

Giants - s/t (guitar-driven post-rock with some very pretty moments)
Gillian Welch - The Harrow and the Harvest (absolutely wonderful strippt-down American roots music... Thoroughly recommended!)
Grails - Deep Politics (some of the best trance-inducing space rock ever...)
Long Distance Calling - s/t (amazing post-metal, with top-notch bass + drumwerks; even the songs with vocals are good...)
Lunar Dunes - Galaxsea (future-retro space jazz... this'll be the music playing in the waiting room for your robodoctor in a coupla years)
Mastodon - The Hunter (...it's less proggy than the last one; more heavy, shorter songs... good stuff)

Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will (typical Mogwai, with epic highs + tender lulls + bashing, crashing, angelic choruses of layered + effected guitars... some truly apotheotic stuff, esp live)
Psychic Ills - Hazed Dream (space rock done right... loads of delay, reverb, sorta-tribal toms... downright psychedelic from git to go)
Radar Men from the Moon - Intergalactic Dada + Space Trombones (instrumental Danish band with a sound that lands somewhere near classic Kyuss; bounces from heavy to brokedown in the best ways)
Riding the Diplodoc - Dilettantes Like Lions (instrumental math-rock at its most frantically spastic...)
Russian Circles - Empros (a departure of sorts, more bass-heavy - + the bass more fuzzy - than previous releases; still a great album, but with the band accessing a bit more noise than in the past, at least on record... seen em get rather noisy live + hope to again soon)
Sonic Youth - Simon Werner a Disparu (this is the soundtrack to some Frenchie movie... but the band put the score together using outtakes from the Daydream Nation sessions, so I perceive this as really more of a bonus disc of those sessions, since it's unlikely that I'm gonna watch the film. If you like Daydream Nation, you should get this right away, cuz it's very much of that same tone, particularly regarding the guitar tones + tunings)

Tommy Guerrero - Lifeboats and Follies (another collection of tasty grooves from our favorite skater-hero... the basswerk is - as usual - ultra-tight + funky)
U.S. Christmas - The Valley Path (another single, album-length track... not as directly stonerific as TAB's new one, but more of a psychedelic journey. Good, but it hasn't snagged me as viscerally as their earlier releases)
White Hills - H-p1 (fucking rawk! trippy + wild + heavy + dripping with effects + incredible!!!)

Some Interesting Free Music...

I've meant to mention this before, but never got around to it... Sorry for my slackery. Anyway, in my constant search for interesting music, I came across a band I really like called Charts and Maps, whose odd-time- + saxamaphone-laden stuff sits nicely in-between jazz + post-rock.


Further digging turnd up their record label's blog, where (a huge chunk of, if not) the entire catalog is available for free download, under the aegis of the Creative Commons licensing agreement.

I cannot stress how very cool + important Creative Commons is to creators; clear-cut language that cuts thru any bullshit to the core of creators + their ability to retain their inherent rights to their creations...


So, Wise Owl is the record label + they seem to be a very cool + forward-thinking one...

I haven't had a chance to properly listen to all of these bands, or even most of 'em, but so far I've really enjoyed Charts and Maps, cssc, Lost Reverie (which is a bit more metal), Petrograd in Transit, + Taiga Blues...

Check out some free music, motherfucker!

(Here's a Charts + Maps vid - sort of... for 'Pearl Divers of the Arabian Peninsula' off their newest, Dead Horse)

Earth Strikes the Bottletree Cafe!

...which sounds only a little more apocalyptic than it actually was...

What it was: Earth on tour to support their newest release,
the excellent + atmospheric Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light (Pt. 1)...

So, Earth's line-up this time around was Dylan Carlson on guitar, with cellist Lori Goldston, longtime collaborator Adrienne Davies on drums, and Angelina Baldoz on bass... (sorry, no pix from the show, cuz neither of us that attended had a camera worth a shit on us).

Surprisingly, the volume was not overpowering, though as songs progressed the dynamics certainly included some increase in volume that workt quite nicely to help with the songs swelling to epic proportions...

If you haven't gotten the chance to check em out yet, do so at your earliest opportunity! Like, now, motherfucker! Even at a reasonable volume, this is some trance-inducing stuff... not so much drone as spaghetti-western instru-metal, played in slow-motion...

Along with a few others, the setlist included:
  Blackwater Slide (a cover of a tune by *Ann Riggs*?  - sorry, I wasn't listening so well to words when they started... had me musick ears on!)
  Old Black
  Father Midnight (both from the new one)
  The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull (from the 2008 album of the same name).

Click here to watch an earlier show of theirs at the same venue here in Birmingham, memorialized on our local PBS station on their We Have Signal (Live at the Bottletree) series. (Also archived on the series' site are shows featuring Tortoise, Pelican, Man or Astroman? + tons more... check em out!)

Short + Sweet: Recent Bad-Ass EPs + Singles

 So, here's a handful of recent EPs, singles + demos that I found to be particularly interesting...

And So I Watch You from Afar

7 Billion People All Alive at Once 

:: This single remix of one of the better songs off the newest ASIWYFA Gangs, gets into a very trip-hoppy synth-heavy spot early on, but shifts to a more Errors-style mix of synth-pop + electronica + post-rock. Neat, but only a must-have if you already have + like the full-length... which you should give a listen.

Arms and Sleepers

Digital
 

:: 

A Man, A Plan, A Canal: Panama
 

:: A pair of EPs of sumptuous sorta-loungy trip-hop. The full-length - The Organ Hearts - is really tasty + perfect for coming down...

Cosmonauts Day

Live Demos
 

:: Russian space-rock-tinged post-metal. Nicely done demo tracks. Don't guess they'll be touring anywhere near the American South, though... dammit. For fans of Russian Circles + Red Sparowes.

Empty Space Orchestra

Dark Matters
 

:: Heavy, distorted bass... tasty guitar-figures dancing over the top of some intense + stop-laden drumparts... and a saxophone. It's heavy, it's instrumental... Musically, it's somewhere, somehow, in a strange soundscape between Pelican and Mr. Bungle... Check it out + see what you think.

Felipe Arcazas

Yardang 

::  

Freedom
 

:: Two long desert-metal tracks, stone-y + psychedelic, with some lovely neck-pickup-toned leads. If you like Brant Bjork or Kyuss, this is waiting for you to crank up while you smoke up...

 

There'll be some more cool musicks spotlighted here over the next few weeks as I start to put together my Best of 2011 recommendations, so peek back soon + let me know what you think of the stuff I've brought to your attention...

What Got Heard: White Hills, John Coltrane, Ghost + more...

As usual, I've been checking out some music recommended to me by friends, enemies, strangers on blogs... +, as usual, there's some good stuff out there, along with some that ain't really all that... Here's a rundown of what I heard this week (* ratings are out of a possible 5, btw):

Administration Shock Him - 39:03 (2011)    *****
Post-rock the right way: instrumental + great for roadtrippin'. I hadn't heard of this band before they showd up on a couple of blogs I follow, but I will be keeping them on my radar from now on. The production is nice, giving this a polish similar to God Is an Astronaut. Music's in that same vein, too, with the big epic swells + tender little passages that keep it interesting + a nod of the head to post-metal's huge walls of guitars alongside some drum programming that tips its own hat ever-so-politely to modern glitch'tronica. The third track ('III' - yeah, it also has the typical post-rock pretentious-ass songtitles...) features a long audio excerpt from the Apollo 11 mission broadcast that adds so very well to some already-beautiful music. Big high-quality sound, solid dynamics... HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION!!

Dias de Septiembre - s/t (2011)    ****
Firmly entrencht in the post-rock / post-metal styles, with lots of trilled single-note guitar lines, atmosphere to spare, bass parts that bounce from almost-static foundations to lovely + melodic lines + back, a wide dynamic range dominated in the huge-sounding sections by big guitars, tasty drumming (which synaethesia my wife really dislikes: "Drums are NOT tasty! And they're usually verrrrrry dirty!"). There are some vocals, but they're few + far-between + nicely coucht in the mix (mostly long, held notes with some harmonies, used almost like a synthpart for chordij behind the main musical parts). This band has an excellent capacity for smallifying itself during the more subtle + quiet moments in the music, + also builds back into the epic parts quite well. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Eternal Tapestry - Palace of the Night Skies (2009)    ***1/2
There's a certain something lacking in the production here, like it's a live-offa-one-mic recording, but the music is just so damn'd hypnotic + trippy that I can get past it. There's a callback to classic raga-rock here, with a cyclic building on the basic riff of each song that's allowed by the songlengths (2 outta 3 are around 17 minits) to develop from something sorta simple, or at least unadorned, into something more grandiose + embellisht-upon, before winding back down. I've heard 3 different rekkids from this band + have liked every one of 'em. RECOMMENDED!

Ghost - Opus Eponymous (2010)    **
Extremely-overhypt Eurometal... The whole thing has excellent production, but it otherwise sounds like a lost metal record (maybe Cirith Ungol with a different + somehow worse singr + a Keith Emerson or Rick Wakeman wannabe on keyboards...) from 1985. The guitars + bass sound great, but waaaay dated. The drums are really solid, + they're comfortably coucht in the metal playbook, as are the lyrics. But the singr (+ vocal harmonies) + the keyboards are anomalies to the music, sounding way too much like they came from some 1970s prog-rock sessions or an album by Europe ("It's the fiiiiinal countdown!" 'toot-too-toot-toot toot-toot-toot-too-toot)... When I first heard about these guys, vocal comparisons were made to King Diamond; thankfully, that wasn't quite the case, except that, just like with Mercyful Fate, the vocals totally ruint this band for me. I'd love a copy without any singing or keyboards, cuz the rest of the music is straight out of my high-school metal memories. But this is being hypt as some ground-breaking shit, + the only way I see this breaking ground is in a graveyard with a shovel, digging up + defiling some classic metal corpses + putting 'em on an album. Sorry, but just... no. (The album cover's good, though.)

Gnod - Ingnodwetrust (2011)    ***
Oh, good googly-moogly, just look at that fucking beautiful cover... Psychedelic-as-fuck, this two-track 30+minit rekkid has dangerously-throbbing bass + a hypnotic drone-thing going on that sucks you right in. First time that I heard these guys a while back, Gnod + I didn't mesh well. Then I checkt out the Gnod Drop Out with White Hills stuff + decided I should give em another shot (cuz if White Hills likes em, maybe there's something there). I'm glad I did, but I'd only recommend it to my weirdest music-friends (or is that weirdest-music friends?)... Over the throbby, repeated bass-figures surf a range of crazysounds: delay effects on guitars + synths + samples. a knob-twiddling heaven. Raga-licious stuff. If you dig White Hills (see a trend here...?), this one is much stranger, but might also tickle yer pickle.

Henryspenncer - To the Timeless Valley (2010)    ***
This is a strange one, with elements of Krautrock, Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western scores, prog rock + Bruce Licher's post-Savage Republic desert-instrumental band, Scenic, all bubbling to the top at times. It most sounds like the soundtrack to some non-existent obscuro-cinema-europa film, composed by somebody kickt out of, I dunno, Goblin, maybe? It's good, but it doesn't really grab me like it needs to (especially considering how little space remains here for more music now). Not memorable enough to really recommend, but I definitely suggest checking it out to any fellow deep-catalogue-delvers...

John Coltrane - Cosmic Music (1966)    ****
Some far-reaching + inspired free jazz from a true jazz pioneer here, but not for the faint-of-heart... Alice Coltrane + Pharoah Sanders are also featured players on this one, which will definitely help the already-familiar decide if it's at all up their alley. Trane + Pharoah are really flying free here, building huge walls of sax + then tearing 'em down, though there are some tender + more melodic moments that surface unexpectedly at times, + Alice's trademark modal piano style is on full display. There's even some vocals, an invocation reminiscent of the one that introduces 'Om' shows up on 'The Sun,' which closes the album on a nice piano riff of Alice's that fans of her Journey in Satchinanda album will dig. Recommended ONLY for fans of Trane's free jazz excursions + fans of Pharoah Sanders' + Alice Coltrane's rekkids as bandleaders. (Others will likely think it sounds like a gaggle of geese flying headlong into a woodchipper made of drums + pianos.) HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! (but ya gotta read the stipulation above...)

Pyrior - Oceanus Procellarum (2010)    ***
This shit rocks! It's a nice representation of what the young people call stoner-metal nowadays, with some of the quieter moments sounding a bit more post-metal... instrumental + grooving, heavy-as-hell, with chugging basslines + monster drumming + big wah-driven guitars + an obvious love of Black Sabbath. Definitely something I'd recommend for fans of stoner-metal stuff like Karma to Burn, but after a bit, it loses my attention, sitting on some riffs a bit longer than I'd like.

Sigmoid Argonaut - s/t EP (2009)    ****
A very math-rock EP (under 25 minits), with the requisite excellent musicianship, + a particularly notable rhythm section - the drummr + bassist are tight + funky + in total control of dynamics. Guitars are tasty + prominent, along with some very prog-flavored synth parts. And the music is badass; points of reference for me include Blind Idiot God, Maps + Atlases, early Trans Am, + even some old Yes or ELP (cuz that synth is soooo damn'd retro sometimes!) + old krautrock... if any combination of those makes yer liver quiver, go hunt this down! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Voice of the Seven Thunders - s/t (2010)    ***1/2
This sounds like some late 1960s heavy psychedelia, with that characteristic-of-the-time fuzztone all over the guitar sound. Not that that's a bad thing... There's an acoustic folk-chedelia vibe here that screams 'Sandy Bull!' at times, along with a lot of sorta-meandering Bevis Frond-y jams with tons of guitarij. I'd think that the folks at the Ptolemaic Terrascope really dig this. RECOMMENDED!

White Hills - H-p1 (2011)    *****
I love this band! This is their newest (double) album, + it's a huge slab of blisst-out psych-rock with their typically-heavy spin + a raga-stylee patience-in-development that lets songs build + fall (over a decent span of time, a few of the tracks are 10+ minits), grow + diminish - all while still recalling or echoing the central riffs. Huge distorted guitars + trippy synth bits + kooky effects-noises ride upon a monster tide of big rock drums + fuzzy bass. The vocals also work well - not a lot of vocals, really... usually some harmonized he + she vox that're not too loud, not buried... just kinda floating inside the mix, intertwined. And don't get the wrong idea; the album is plenty dynamic, with some softer, introspective moments intersperst throughout, drafting a well-crafted ebb + flow to the music. If you like the recent (more Hawkwind-flavored) Mudhoney albums, this is right up yer alley! HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION!!!

And that, aside from two sucky recent EPs + an older ambient rekkid that blew chunks, all from artists who shall remain unnamed here, is what got heard here this weekend!
Later!
B*>

Mogwai + Errors: Birmingham, Alabama (19 May, 2011)

Mogwai stoppt thru Birmingham, Alabama, with supporting act Errors, at WorkPlay a couple of nights ago. And what a fucking show. Check out the included pix (courtesy of pal + snappy local musician, Donny Guitar).


Errors started up just after 8p + played a 45 minute set that included much of the material from their recent rekkid Come Down with Me. Their set was a tasteful-yet-freaky combination of post-rock + electronica, and there were moments that their keyboard-driven sound was highly evocative of some of the best early synth-punk. Excellent. Fucking. Band.

The only thing that could come close to a complaint is that, to a set of ears tuned to the Deep South, a Glaswegian accent is hard to follow (+ I bet that it was waaaaay worse for the band members, trying to understand some crazy-ass redneck accents)... but, really, that nigh-impenetrable Scots brogue was quite endearing. The skinny here is that Errors is another Scots band, one which Mogwai signed to their rekkid label. And one which shares a drummer - one James Hamilton - with Mogwai this tour (Mogwai's drummer was unable to tour with em this leg). And Hamilton is fuckin' amazing, keeping a super-tight groove-pocket pulsing + living while playing stuff that also incorporates a good bit of sequenced keyboard parts. Of particular note in that regard: "Supertribe" off Come Down with Me by Errors, which leaves me with a big shit-eating grin + a delicious aftertaste of very early New Order or classic Tubeway Army...


Mogwai took the stage after a very short 'twixt-break (which was a nice opportunity to chat with a dude at a neighboring table, there to see Mogwai for the 26th time - !!! - + to dip outside for a quick cigarette - cuz tobacco smoke is on the way out as a health risk at the same time that people are knocking back alcoholic bevs left + right...) + blew the doors off the space!


Their sound continued to grow larger + larger, louder + louder, throughout the set, creating epic soundscapes that pulled everyone into the mix. The set included choice tracks from their newest, Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will + featured the band playing some serious musical chairs, as everyone except the drummer (+ he played for BOTH bands, so he wasn't exactly slackin', either) proceeded to switch instruments repeatedly during the set, including some HUGE sonic moments with guitar upon guitar upon guitar layering that yielded some of the most epic-sounding live music I've gotten to experience.


(Ho... Lee... Shit... wouldja just look at all them pedals! There were more pedals onstage for the Mogwai set than in any local music store's stock... gives you serious gear-wood if you're a musician...)


This clip of them live is from just a coupla days earlier on the same tour:

Gotta say that this easily ranks with the best shows I've seen, which includes some excellent shows: Sonic Youth / Mudhoney / Kurt Cobain / Pavement at Castaic Lake in 92, repeated Tortoise shows at the Palace, Knitting Factory LA, etc., Isotope 217° / Jet Black Crayon / Nobekazu Takemura somwhere in LA (99 maybe?), Pharoah Sanders (and, like, wow! was that old dude insane + awe-inspiring!!!) at Catalina's Hollywood (97 maybe?), fIREHOSe at the Ivory Tusk in Tuscaloosa (90 or 91?), Jane's Addiction doing an impromptu acoustic set at Amoeba Hollywood in 02 while I was working (nice getting paid to do a job you love + see a band you like do songs you love), Nirvana / Das Damen at the Omni/New Daisy in Memphis right after Nevermind's release...

Now, if we could just get Tortoise to come back Alabam' again... (+ maybe our sometime-posting brother Da5e will post about the next night of the tour in Atlanta, which he + Lady Da5e were scheduled to attend...)

2011 Already Rocks!

So, not even a full month into '11 + there are already a couple of excellent albums out...

Earth Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 1

Continuing in the same vein as HEX: Or Printing in the Infernal Method + The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull, Angels... sounds like the Ennio Morricone soundtrack to a lost Sergio Leone spaghetti western... Kinda bleak + barren, sorta sparse + airy... The perfect accompaniment musick for a viewing of Alexandro Jodorowsky's El Topo.

Mogwai Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

I've had an on-again, off-again relationship with the music of Mogwai for years now, finding some of their music brilliant but being wildly disappointed by other stuff...

Gotta say that this rekkid is mostly brilliant, with some truly surprising bits popping up from time to time. And 'surprising' doesn't turn up as often as it ought to when describing new music... not as a good thing, anyway!

Both rekkids have super-snappy cover art, + both make for excellent long-distance driving musicks, too, so start planning that roadtrip!

\m/ Metal Up Yer Ass from Adult Swim \m/

Presented by Adult Swim (along with Scion...), Metal Swim is a 16-track compilation of brutal goodness! For free!!! 'Cuz those folks over at Williams Street are some stand-up joes...

The entire album can be downloaded as a zip file or streamed directly from the Adult Swim website. It's been available for a few months now, but I hadn't gotten around to listening to the whole thing til this holiday weekend (+ the requisite multi-hour roadtrippage)...

And the website also features a few more music-comp downloads, with interesting music + neat titles like Ghost Swim...






 
Tracklist:

1. Death Angel – Truce
2. Skeletonwitch – Bringers of Death
3. Torche – Arrowhead
4. Ludicra – Path of Ash
5. Kylesa – Forsaken
6. Black Tusk – Fatal Kiss
7. Red Fang – Hank Is Dead
8. Black Cobra – Frozen Night
9. Saviours – Dixie Dieway
10. Witch Mountain – Veil of the Forgotten
11. Isis – Pliable Foe
12. Jesu – Dethroned
13. Pelican – Inch above Sand
14. Zoroaster – Witch Hammer
15. Withered – Extinguished with the Misery
16. Boris – Luna

Download it here.

Best Music of 2010: Space Rock, Post-Rock, Post-Metal, Stoner Metal, IDM

Here's the cream of the musical crop for 2010...

Lots of interesting music from an array of cool bands. Pictured are the 30 best releases of 2010 (in alphabetical order), but my personal favorites of the year are (in no particular order...):

• Red Sparowes The Fear Is Excruciating, But Therein Lies the Answer
  This is an incredibly beautiful record. Maybe it's just me, but I hear the influence of Animals-era Pink Floyd here. In the best of all possible ways, like Animals was a starting point now far behind them. Saw 'em live in support of this record + was completely blown away by the depth of their sound + the well-pulled-off-live intricacies of their material. Go get this, dammit!
• Cloudland Canyon Fin Eaves
  This weirdly-gorgeous record of poppy melodies run thru a food processor sounds like somebody found some Loveless-era MBV tracks + rerecorded them with John McEntire + Daedelus co-producing... Fucking excellent, but be careful: this record could feasibly cause hallucinations! And could definitely accompany some...
• Intronaut Valley of Smoke
  Intricate + involving prog-flavored post-metal, with stand-out vocals (+ harmonies!) + an outstanding fretless bass player (which'll almost always win my heart over...)
• Julie Christmas The Bad Wife
  Wow... She looks like a pretty scene-grrl, but she sings like PJ Harvey-raised-on-metal... soft + childlike + breathy shifts to wry + sarcastic melds into Satan-possesst blood-curdling murder-screams (really... a vocal + emotional range to make Chris Cornell envious - even the 1990s Chris Cornell, who could actually hit those crazy notes live...); she's one of the few female singers whose work really hits me + it hits hard. Hell, one of the few singers, period. I'd just rather not hear most people's lyrics + vocalizations, as they're too often the weakest parts of the songs... nobody complains about Tortoise's vocals or harmonies live, y'know... Anyway. Evidently, JC brings it all to the stage, too, though, so I'll definitely be checking out Made Out of Babies or Battle of Mice or her solo live show if any of em comes around the podunk Deep South...
• Mugstar Sun, Broken...
  Another space-rock masterpiece from mostly-instrumental Mugstar! They were way prolific this year, also releasing Lime (some crazy extended jams!!!)
• White Hills White Hills
  These folks also droppt tons of space-rock; alongside this release were Stolen Stars Left for No One + the Gnod Drop Out with the White Hills team-up with Gnod (extended spacejams, very Bardo Pond-y...)
  
• Maserati Pyramid of the Sun
  Pulsing + Kraftwerk-y, with some of the best late-night, open highway driving music in a loooooong time.
• UFOMammut Eve
  An EP that develops one looooong track across five movements, bringing the best aspects of stoner-metal together in a bubbling stew.
  
• God Is an Astronaut Age of the Fifth Sun
  More epic instrumental post-metal; these guys always rock; this one seems more like a soundtrack than ever...
  
• Kylesa Spiral Shadow
  Super-tasty + intelligently-composed metal with 2 percussionists! Huge + driving, with wonderfully intricate drum parts buttressing some major riffage...

the rest of the Top 30...


Post-Rock:

• The Album Leaf A Chorus of Storytellers
• Algernon Ghost Surveillance
• The American Dollar Atlas
• Deadhorse We Can Create Our Own World
• El Ten Eleven It's Still Like a Secret
• Souvenir's Young America The Name of the Snake
• Trans Am Thing
• 65 Days of Static We Were Exploding Anyway

IDM / Electronica:

• Bonobo Black Sands
• Errors Come Down with Me
• Fourtet There Is Love in You
• To Rococo Rot Speculation

Space-Rock:

• Quest for Fire Lights from Paradise
• U.S. Christmas Run Thick in the Night

Stoner Metal + Post-Metal:

• And So I Watch You from Afar Letters
• Bison B.C. Dark Ages
• Electric Wizard Black Masses
• Gifts from Enola Gifts from Enola
• Sasquatch III

And, in the Post-Hardcore/Alt-Rock genre:

• Maps + Atlases Perch Patchwork

... as well as some honorable mentions...

• Negurã Bunget Vоrstele Pamоntului
  A freaky-ass melding of Eastern European folk + death metal. Still growing on me, though, + certainly worth a listen... Their last one, OM, was outstanding + this new release continues to show the evolution of these musical weirdos!
• Yakuza Of Seismic Consequence
  The vocals took this one out of the running for me, though the music is (typically of Yakuza) well-done + all over the place, touching down at various times as wild iterations of brutal metal, complex ambient, + out jazz...
• The Orb + David Gilmour Metallic Spheres
  I wanted this to be, well, fucking badass Dark Side of the Moon revisited kinda shit. It's good, but sadly falls short of its true potential...
• Brian Eno Small Craft on a Milk Sea
  Held high hopes, this one did, with Eno's culling of 'songs' from hours of improvisational jams with some noteworthy musicians. It's a solid ambient record, for sure, but I'd looked forward to another sonic Eno-vation, like his work on Music for Airports or that lush effects-dripping guitar-driven production on U2's The Unforgettable Fire, + this does not cut any new musical cloth...
• Monster Magnet Mastermind
  This is more of the same from these cats... It's really pretty good, but has too many of those drumless segments driven by Dave's 'clever' lyrics to really stay rockin' long enough for the "herbal medicines" to really kick in...
• La Otracina Reality Has Got to Die (cool + heavy psychedelic rock)
• Stonewall Noise Orchestra Sweet Mississippi Deal (Soundgarden-y vox over some solid stoner metal riffage)
• Hellas Mounds New Heaven / New Earth (heavy + epic post-metal)
• Empires Freshwater Reflection (also heavy + epic post-metal)
• High Places Vs. Mankind (cool afrobeat rhythms + twisty pop melodies)
• Jaga Jazzist One-Armed Bandit (a giant post-rock/jazz emsemble from Northern Europe... like a more prog-estra Tortoise)

Now, naturally, we don't host any of these here, but you can certainly find some or all of em with some thoughtful searching.

Red Sparowes Live...

So, last Tuesday was the release date for the new Red Sparowes rekkid The Fear Is Excruciating, But Therein Lies the Answer. The rekkid is excellent, and is sitting comfortably right now as my favorite of '10 so far. The live show that night at the Bottletree here in Birmingham was equally super-duper...

The opening acts were:
Mr. Gnome (interesting 2pc rock; strippt down + with she-vox) - I just wasn't that into their set, prob'ly cuz I was still relatively sober...
Doomriders (way metal + tight as hell...) - the guitar-playing singer was nice at the merch table, + screamd like he was bein' skinnt while onstage. The bassist also did some solid singing + the guitar leads (sometimes twin'd out b/w both guitars) were very tasty. Their newest rekkid Darkness Come Alive (out Sept'09) was mixd + all by Kurt Ballou (of the band Converge + Godcity Studio), who also handled recording the Young Widows another waaaay heavy band that was here in Birmingham opening for some killer post-rock/post-metal bigwigs when Russian Circles came thru late last year...

and then came the main act:

Red Sparowes (fookin ruled)
bass. guitar. guitar. guitar. pedal steel guitar. keys. drums. no vox.
Amazing multimedia show, with suitably trippy filmicks washing around behind the band, who workt their musickal magicks with lots of shimmer-y delays + echoes. Aptly enough, the film playing on the screen that comes down between stage + crowd between bands was Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (sadly soundless), setting an appropriate tone for a solid set of psychedelic musical exploration.

Check out one of their live clips (sadly, not from this show/tour; it seems to feature an earlier line-up):


Don't miss out on seeing them on this tour!

Quality Shit I've Heard So Far This Year... or "So Far, So Good: 2010 in Music, 1st Quarter"

As this year progresses, I find that there've already been some pretty good musick releases in 2010. After spending a good bit of time determining my Best Music of 2009 list thru that November, I worried that perhaps last year's bumper crop of kick-ass would be followed up by a dryspell. And I was - thankfully - wrong about that! Since most of my life is spent working in my underground lair or driving, I get lots of unbroken listening time without too many distractions. Some stuff you like might be missing... I might not've gotten to it yet, so lemme know what else is rockin' the One-Zero... here's what's tickled my ears so far:

POST-ROCK / ELECTRONICA:

The Album Leaf - A Chorus of Storytellers
The American Dollar - Atlas
Fourtet - There Is Love in You
To Rococo Rot - Speculation
Bonobo - Black Sands
...I'd recommend any of these to my post-rock + electronica listenin' friends, who are prob'ly already aware of each of em, as all of these artists have been releasing records for years... I'm most fond of the new ones from The American Dollar + The Album Leaf. Still top-notch for fans of the earlier werks, but with enough maturation in sound + scope (+ production) to remain compelling. Excellent music for late-night open highway driving...
Download the "Second Sight" MP3, a freebie offa The American Dollar's Atlas!





...and the HEAVIER STUFF:

Red Sparowes - The Fear Is Excruciating, But Therein Lies the Answer
    Consistently impressive with their ability to craft powerful tracks that develop in intensity + depth, offering up beautiful soundscapes built on the fundamental vocabulary of (post) metal (+ pedal steel) + the scope of a concept album or filmscore.

Mugstar - Sun, Broken...
White Hills - White Hills
    Wow. I'd only found these bands when Trensmat released the Sonic Attack series of split 7" singles of current bands doing Hawkwind covers (late last year). Stony-as-hell space rock at its best, vocals that don't overpower the musicks... little sonic bombs 'splodin' behind my eyes.
Check out the new Mugstar at Discogs!
Preview the new White Hills at the ThrillJockey website!


Still on the fence about these last few, though; you oughtta give em a listen anyway + then make a case for / ag'in em here...
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Option Paralysis (I like this one, but it doesn't seem to be a development forward in the growth of the band's sound, just more of the same.)
Dead Meadow - Three Kings (it's so no-frills that the songs either cut to the bone or fall flattr than my jokes)
High Places - High Places vs. Mankind (I sure do like the drums / percussion on this'un, though... + the lovely album cover)
Errors - Come Down with Me

So, now you've got a few new rekkids to listen to while you do whatever else there is to do besides listen to musick... 

The Best Music of 2009 - My Top Twenty-Five...

Another year slips past, leaving us with meager + bare memories of the time that we've lost... until we turn to the best music that was released in 2009, which brings smiley-happy-time to all the world! Here's my personal list of the best music released this year. They're in roughly alfabetical order, since trying to rank them any further than "these are all really good" would be a total snoozefest for me + you both. So, here they are; go download or buy some stuff you ain't heard yet + know that it'll be good ('cuz Unca Igor dun tol'ya):

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Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.

- Lord of the Underground: Vishnu and the Magic Elixir

Evidently, Hawkwind + Pink Floyd got loaded together + had a baby. A rock orchestra baby. A Japanese rock orchestra baby... And that baby was midwifed + nursemaided by Sandy Bull... Rocking riffage, swirling + trippy synths, dronee-stylee, tribal drumming... now we now where Syd Barrett + Nik Turner are!

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Bardo Pond - Peri

Yet another busy year for Bardo Pond! If you haven't heard em, think of them as the "you got Your peanut butter in my chocolate" genetic experiment gone awry that'd happen if Brundlefly stuck Jessamine + Sonic Youth into one of his wacky transporter pods... Lots of stony riffs, weird noises that could be synths or waaay treated guitars, he + she vox that float just under the music. In addition to Peri, which I see as kinda their "main" record of the year, BP also released three other following notable records:
Gazing at Shilla
Volume VII
Game Five and a Half
...as well as three super-freaky drone-laden side-projects:
Moon Phantoms - Moon Phantoms
Alumbrados - Monochord
Alasehir - Torment of the Metals
...(I'm always a sucker for alchemy-themed records...)

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Baroness - Blue Record

Badass! Big powerful riffage that doesn't stay the same til boredom. Metal without being one-dimensional, with lots of nods to classic rock + early metal, and some more modern stoner metal stylings.




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Caspian - Tertia

(At times quite heavy) instrumental post-rock, with walls of guitar sound that evoke prime My Bloody Valentine-era Kevin Shields; shimmering chords + tons of delay! The quiet passages are well-placed + provide great soft spots to build the songs back up from.


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Cougar - Patriot

Instrumental post-rock, with clever drummage + intricate/delicate guitarwork that build + swell to immensities before resolving back down again. Extremely neat production, with extra crispy drums. The more I listen to this one, the more I love it; it's rapidly easing its way toward best album of the year... along with the new If These Trees Could Talk!


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Dinosaur, Jr. - Farm

If at times it seems that J. Mascis' guitar solos are overabundant + superfluous to the songs, then it must be Tuesday + we must be listening to Dinosaur, Jr., with lots of heavy + beautiful guitar melodies + solos beefing up some clever pop songs. Somehow, 20 years after You're Living All Over Me + Bug, DJ's original lineup is still mining fertile ideas for new music, though the vein remains the same... And Mascis has possibly my favorite guitar tone, which is thick + grabs hold of ya!


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Do Make Say Think - Other Truths

instrumental post-rock. this time, it's 4 tracks from DMST, each highlighting a different aspect of their music; you get some light + ethereal along with your cinematic + expansive. Best album of the year candidate...


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Dysrhythmia - Psychic Maps

Instru-metal three-piece... I hear (the good kind of) influence from classic King Crimson, as well as lots of frantic metal riffage + thoughtful arrangements of some brutal tracks.


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the Flaming Lips - Embryonic

Yet another highly anticipated release from one of the greatest bands ever. Can't hate on a single album they've put out in over 20 years, and this one's no exception. I haven't completely assimilated it all yet (there's a lot to take in), but I like. A lot. Even if it's not my favorite 'Lips record (yet... so far, that's still 1987's Oh My Gawd - the first 'Lips musicks to ever kiss my ears), it's still striking. This band continues to evolve with every release, staying frickin' neat-o the whole time!
 
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If These Trees Could Talk - Above the Earth, Below the Sky

Instrumental post-rock that often leans toward heavy. Maybe my favorite record of the year. Hypnotic + cinematic!


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Isis - Wavering Radiant (+ the Ephemeral EP)

Some vocals waft into range from time to time, but the more impactful moments of the new Isis releases (a full-length + an EP) come during the instrumental passages, which quickly shift from beautiful to ominous throughout. Powerful stuff.


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Kylesa - Static Tensions

Tribal + brutal stoner metal band (from Georgia?) that weaves an unrelenting web of intricate guitar + basslines over powerful tom-heavy drumming. Great driving music!



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Maserati - Passages

Kinda sounds like 90s Trans Am records, especially since this album contains some delicate post-rock, some overt Krautrock + Kraftwerk influences, some driving + moving moments. Broad + varying styles bump against each other, but without being too disparate to gel as a cohesive album.


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Mastodon - Crack the Skye

Mastodon's series of concept albums continues with the aerocentric Crack the Skye. This one is much more musically diverse than previous Mastodon albums, with more than a few moments of sheer progrock shining through the metal. This isn't my favorite Mastodon release (that'd be Leviathan, just for the record), but it's still an awesome + mighty album.


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Mooncake - Cast the Route

Instrumental post-rock. The only bad thing I can say about this is that, unlike previous Mooncake releases, this EP is a mere two songs, clocking in at under 20 minutes. Word is, they're from Russia; don't know, but I am glad for the internet - else I'd've never found out about em (same with the similar post-rockers Deepset, from Indonesia).
 
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Nile - Those Whom the Gods Detest

Brutal + with a penchant for ancient Egyptian themes (+ scales, evidently). Metal as fuck. machinegun drums. gravelly grave-vocals. outstanding! The deathiest death metal of all... like, what if Dethklok was a real band... they'd be scared of Nile, thass what!




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Pelican - What We All Come to Need

Huge + menacing, Pelican's music often evokes giant monsters + huge mechs wading into cities, destruction-bent. Looking forward to seeing this display of aural delicacy + brutality live when they come to the Birmingham area in December (esp cuz I misst em -with Isis!!!- during the summer)...


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Russian Circles - Geneva

Heavy instrumental post-rock three-piece. Got to see em live in October + was blown away by their sound. Lots of textural guitars + thunderous basslines, tribal drumming, + clever songwriting.


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Slayer - World Painted Blood

More new Slayer! This ain't as jaw-dropping as God Hates Us All was on first listen (it's up there for me right behind Reign in Blood), but is as solid as or even better than the more recent Christ Illusion. No surprises, but no disappointment, either. Lots of dive-bombing guitars, thunderous riffs (the bass is even mixd a bit louder, it seems), angry screeds... Yay!


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Sonic Youth - The Eternal

Another excellent release from one of the most influential bands of the 1980s + 90s. Namecheckt by almost as many bands as have flat-out rippt them off, Sonic Youth has managed to maintain a solid presence in the scene for over 20 years now. This new record does a lot of the same stuff expected from the band: some twistd angular reworking of pop-stylee rock, some beautiful + unearthly sounding guitars, thumpy bass, poundy drums.

Like former labelmates Dinosaur, Jr., who're also on this list, SY hits with a new slab that evokes their classic SST records while still being fresh + relevant-sounding. How very cool that SY, Dinosaur, Jr., Slayer, and the Flaming Lips, all of whom had records in my top releases of the year lists in 1986/7 are all still represented + creating solid music after alla these years...


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Sunn O))) - Monoliths and Dimensions

This record will sound best when played ridiculously loud. Through headphones. While loaded. And sitting in the dark. Beautiful, scary, huge, ominous... drone-thick, distortion-driven almost-ambient metal that is perfect lullaby music... next-gen volume + distortion experimentation that'd prob'ly well suit fans of the same from My Bloody Valentine, Sleep, Spectrum, E.A.R., etc... and they even sneak a little electric Miles Davis stylee in for good measure...


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Them Crooked Vultures - Them Crooked Vultures

A supergroup comprised of Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones... Lemme just say that this is waaaaay better than the reality show Supergroup with Anthrax's Scott Ian trying to stay reasonable + polite while faced with idiots like Sebastian Bach + Ted Nugent... This slab sounds a lot like one of the Desert Sessions records, so if you like those at all, y'know you'll enjoy this one!


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Tortoise - Beacons of Ancestorship

I've already said my piece about this one when it came out [LINK]... An excellent + diverse group of songs + a swell bunch of guys. Go see their in-studio live set + interview with Chris Douridas from sometime this summer (8 July 2009, actually) on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic [LINK]. The Remixes 12" is also a neat little find, with a pair of kooky-wild DnB sides.


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Valis - Dark Matter

Another slab of high-grade stoner metal from a group who had to check out, since their name is taken from the title of a classic super-paranoid Philip K. Dick novel... three albums in + they still do not disappoint!




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J.G. Thirlwell - The Venture Bros. Soundtrack

WOW! All over the dial, from spaghetti western + classic spytones to retrofuturo + beyond. If you love the show, you need the soundtrack. If you don't love the show... fuck you, buddy, and the goat you rode in on!